January 16, 2012

Moni onse (Hello to all of you)
Muli bwanji (How are you (all)?
Today I got a letter from Kathy!! It was sent on the 13th of November.  I think the mail here has a bit of a backed up!! Kathy is so funny! She reported that she threaten to send Ryan to Africa to me!  She may need my help in getting him on the right path!! (ha ha).  However, Elder Hewlet reported that he saw some letters for me at the office, so I will see what they are today.

Today is our zone activity we are going to Kalimba farm.  Kalimba Farm is a reptile park. The park has a large variety of indigenous snakes, tortoises and other reptiles. It is also one of the few places left in the world where you can see the rare and shy slender-nosed crocodile. They have black mambas! It is feeding day and we are going to watch them feed the black mamba chicken! It’s going to be sweet!!

We only baptized one person on Saturday; Prince Bwalaya.  However, it was a great experience! We are going to baptize his wife on the 11 of February and I am excited about that. We were suppose to baptize the Mwaywa family on Saturday, however I don’t if we those baptisms are going to take place. The father of the family put us in a strange situation. He told us that he wants to get baptized but, not go to church.  We told him he can’t get baptized if he doesn’t come to church. He reports continues to report he doesn’t want to come to church, but wants to be baptized. We want to try and baptize people that will stay in the church. We do not want to baptize people who we will never see again.  

I get along well with my companion. Elder Santana is a cool guy and we have a lot fun.  For our p-days we usually start out the day by going to arcades to email, eat lunch somewhere nice, we go to the main chapel to play soccer and have a BBQ, go shopping for the week, and watch a movie at home.  It is cool how they sell movies here.  For example, on one DVD you get about twenty movies and I can get it for about ten pin, which is like five US dollars.  The movies new released come out fast. For example, I can already get the new Mission Impossible movie here on DVD for ten dollars.  In addition, p-days are the days we get haircuts; however here is Zambia they have no clue how to cut a “white man’s” hair!  They don’t understand that when you cut my hair you have to cut against the grain not with the grain of my hair.  I have just started to cut my own hair because having someone here cut it is a waste of money.  It is somewhat funny though because I grew up in Utah and I am sure that most people there have not clue how to cut a “black man’s” hair.  Anyways, the first self haircut did not go as well I hoped but the second one went a little better.  I’ll be a pro by the time I get home.

I have only been on my mission for a short time; however I have a lot of fun/crazy stories.  I write them down in my journal.  So, even if I don’t email them, you can be able to read everything I did every day (If you really want to).  In addition, I’m keeping my planners. I have two so far.  They last for six weeks and they contain a record of all the people I taught.  So, it will be fun to go back over that when I’m finished with my mission. In addition, I bought a journal to keep a record of the people I meet in all my areas.  I am planning on having the following people sign it and I am going to put their pictures next to their names: the members, the people I baptized, and other missionaries. So, that will be cool to look through when I get back home.

Its week six in my second transfer, and I’m going to be staying here in Chinama. However, this transfer will end March 3. We will have to see where I go after March 3.  Sister Seiben is going to Malawi. I was sick the other day; however I am feeling much better today.

I miss my family, my brothers, and my mom’s cooking!  I can’t wait to come home and eat some of my mom’s food! When I do come home and eat some real food I will be in seventh heaven!!

 hope all is well! I miss everyone!
Tsalani bwino (stay well)
Devin

We just got back from the Kalimba farm.  It was extremely cool!! I got the chance to come email again so I did.  The crocodiles were huge! One was about 2 tons and 25 feet long! It was crazy. In addition, there were lots of snakes, such as pythons, spitting cobras, and the black mambas. The black mambas did not look scary until they fed them. Wow! They are fast! One bite and the chickens were dead! After all that we played some soccer and volleyball and just had a good time. Now we are going to go do our shopping and get something for dinner. Anyways, I just thought that you would like to hear about that. It was awesome!

January 9, 2012

Moni (Hello)

I am still waiting for letters.  The mail is really unreliable here and it has been really backed up since Christmas.  However, you can try sending letters through Dear Elder.com (they seem to always find the way here if you use them to send letters).

I have been very busy this week.  We moved in to a new flat with the Chinama with Elder Mahchi and Elder Horne. It’s very nice and seems more like a home. We stay in doctor’s compound in milestone. It feels really nice to come home to a nice house.  The apartment has a nice kitchen with a walk in pantry, a dining room, a family room with nice couches, three bedrooms, and two baths. However, it is a little far from our area and we have to walk quite a bit.  We can’t take transport, because the transport is too far away.  However, we have found a way to take a short cut.  

 The weather is a little crazy here. For example, during this time of the year the average temperature is about 60 degrees.  However, it has been super hot. It is like summer. As a result, the farmers are struggling and their crops are dying. The extreme temperatures are interesting to me, because as I have studied the scriptures more intensely I have taken note as to how the scriptures refer to a change in seasons in the last days.  Reading about it in the bible is interesting.

 My Mission is going well.  I baptized two people on Saturday; Emilda Njovu and Prince Bwalya.  I am extremely excited about the upcoming baptisms.  On the other hand, we had to push the Mwaywa’s family baptisms.  We change the date to the 21st of January.  We wanted to make sure that they were ready to be baptized.  Some of people here think we have lots of money, because we were nice cloths. Some people think that our scripture bags are full of money and we will give them money if they join our church.  Some of the people think that if they are baptized they will get money.

We hear some pretty crazy stories here from the people that we meet.  The other day we meet a guy who claimed that was Satanist.  He was telling us a crazy story about the “killings” that they do in his church that only the leaders know about them. He said the “regular” people don’t know about it. I think he was a little bit ‘crazy’ himself.  It is a little funny at times because when we are walking down the streets some people call us Satanist and that is just so far from the truth. For example, the other day we were walking down the street and there was a child crying, when his mother saw us she started speaking in Nyanja, and she said to her son: “you see those two Satanists, if you don’t be quiet their going to come over here and eat you” (Scary).  The child just went silent and he looked so scared.  I felt kind of bad for him.  So, we went over and said: “Muli bwanji” (a greeting for hello/how are you).  It was funny, because then his mother knew that we could speak Nyanja and her face just turned bright red. She was now aware that knew that we understood what she had said to her little one.  It was an interesting experience. In the end I hope they both knew that we NOT Satanist and we would NEVER eat anyone (especially a small child).

All and all, everything is fine.  I’m having fun here and enjoying my mission. I love Zambia and the people here.  

 Devin

Zambia

The People:

Missionaries:

Food:

2012

I need some LETTERS!! I have not gotten any letters for about 4 weeks!! However, it may be that in Zambia most of the people take the WHOLE month off, including the mail services (a little different than the US).   However, I do appreciate all the letters I get and my family and friends who take the time to write to me.  It really means a lot!  However, I have been really busy and I have not written as much as I should.  I am going to write to everyone this week.  To my family and friends; letters are coming, just be patient.

Anyways, the New Year’s holiday was good.  On Saturday, we had our zone activity.  We went to Kafue. Kafue is a long way out in the bush; we got to see the villages. The villages are really cool to see.  In Kafue there were lots of grass huts, a big lake, and just some awesome scenery.  Zambia is green and mountainous.  However, the mountains here are nothing like the mountains in Utah.  They are more like hills compared to the Utah mountains.  We played some volleyball and soccer.  In addition, we had a bri, we cooked some steak and chicken, we had rolls and salad, it was really nice.  It cool because, we plan all of our zone activities ourselves, we just have to let the mission president know what we are doing, and when we would be back. After, our activity we went back to the mission office. President Padovich didn’t want people to be out after 5. At the mission office we watched national treasure (it was nice to watch a movie for once).  At the mission office Elder Cecil and I were talking with President Padovich.  We were asking him about his career at Warner Brothers.    He helped out a lot with Harry Potter! In addition, he is good friends with Jeff Bridges.  He wanted President Padovich to work for his company.  President Padovich was on the set when they filmed Tron and True Grit.  He said that Jeff Bridges is a pretty cool guy.

Yesterday we went to the Chanza’s house for dinner.  Th Chanza’s is on the far end of our area. They fed us tons of food; rice, nshema,   chicken casserole, potato salad, and ice cream cake. It was nice and the food was really good.  In addition, we watched the best two years with them, we played bop-it, and a game which it gives you a word and you have to explain to your team what it is without saying the word before the time goes out.  It was really fun.   After all that we watched some soccer.  Its actually an okay sport to watch (not a fun as other sports), but after the soccer game he turned it to ESPN because, he thought Elder Murdoch and I would like that. It was cool because, we saw some basketball highlights of the Bulls beating the Lakers!  I miss watching sports.

Even more exciting than sport, we will have eight baptisms on Saturday!!  I am really excited!!  Hopefully, all goes well. However, filling out the paper work for eight baptisms is a little time consuming.  One is okay, but when you have a lot its a little time consuming.

 On Tuesday we are going to have a zone conference.  Elder Cook from the Seventies is coming and the missionaries from Copper belt are coming down. It should be a great zone conference.  My mission is going by fast! I can’t believe that it is already the 4 week of my 2^nd transfer.  My mission is going well, I love it here, I love the people here, and it is just so incredible.  

I love you all. God Bless.

Elder Jasper!

Happy Holidays!

12/26/2011

I hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas!!  I was so happy that I got to talk to my family on Christmas!!  I miss Christmas at home.  I miss going being with my family at Christmas, going over to grandma’s, visiting with family, the food, and just being able to relax! I wish that we could have talked a little longer.  I miss all of you and think of you often.   I miss Riley and Jaden.  I miss hearing their stories about school, playing video games with them, watching sports with dad, and just talking with my mom.   

I really miss playing my guitar! Last Wednesday we were walking to our appointment and I passed by a guy playing his guitar.  I could not help it, I walked up to him, made friends with him, and he let me play his guitar!!  Now, every time I pass that way I stop by and play his guitar. I hope that I don’t forget how to play.

 After I spoke with you, I just hung out for a bit at the mission office.   We watched a movie starring Bill Cosby titled: The Ultimate Gift.  I thought it was a great movie.  I give it 5 stars (ha ha).   We took the big project from the mission home with us. When we got home we watched 17 Miracles.  It was a good movie as well; however I did like the first movie better.

The weather is nice today.  It’s not hot, it’s cloudy and cool, which is nice.  Today we are planning our zone/new year’s activity for Saturday.  We will be moved into our new apartment, we got permission to stay up until midnight, watch a movie, and some of the Elder’s from the other district are coming over.  So, it should be fun.

I love you all; I miss you, God Bless.

Elder Jasper